Traveling is a funny thing. I spent a year abroad in Innsbruck, quite enjoying being in Austria and having most of Europe a train ride away. Yet, in all my travels, I couldn't help but feel guilty that my parents and I spent a year paying for ridiculously expensive college tuition so that I could tromp around taking goofy pictures in front of Roman ruins. We barely have the financial ability to send me to a good college, so am I not overextending our means by assuming the airs of a world traveler? Every trip I planned plagued me with these back-home realities. How could I justify this, when I did not even feel I learned that much in my classes, far less challenging than those at my home university?

Then I came home. At first I just basked in the familiarity of it all-- familiarity that bordered on alien (anyone who has been away from home for a long period of time knows this feeling). As time went on, I reacquainted myself with home, with friends and family, with American styles of life. As time continued even further, I forgot the parts of Europe that had been difficult for me, and instead increasingly remembered only the happy travels and dialect learned. The accepted reaction to "I studied abroad for a year" is always, "Wow, that must have been amazing."

And so it was. By default, I had a great experience in Austria. Did I act in the same fashion as debt-laden credit card enthusiasts? Yes. --or, at least I forced my parents into such an action. Did I spend time at bars when I could have sought out natives to learn the true culture? Of course. Did I have fun? Plenty. I also missed my love at home, often unbearably. Do I now sometimes want to go back, envious of the pictures of freedom that world traveling friends show me? Of course. Traveling is a funny thing.